Chapter Five

Manny set his cell phone down on the kitchen table and rested his head in his hands, elbows propped up on the polished antique wood surface. Almost a week now since the attack on Oceane and Anya, and no word yet on their location. As far as anyone could tell, they were somewhere in the States. He’d barely slept since, worry and fear eating at him from the inside out.

He knew who the culprit was, however. Ruiz. That fucking bastard.

Manny should have had him killed years ago and taken over his territory, saved everyone in the organization a lot of embarrassment and spared Oceane and Anya suffering. Instead he’d bided his time, playing it safe and living his double life until Ruiz’s capture by U.S. officials had made it impossible to sit back any longer.

His cell rang, the familiar ringtone alerting him that it was his accountant calling. He stared at it for a few seconds, wasn’t going to answer at all, but a niggling in his gut made him pick up. “Yes?” He sounded every bit as tired as he felt.

“Is this a bad time?”

“No.” He always projected a calm front. It was absolutely necessary for a man of his position in this deadly business. He was surrounded by power hungry men and rivals who would love to do the same to him as he’d done to Ruiz. No matter what, he had to appear to be calm and in control at all times. Make everyone believe he was unshakable. All while letting his enforcers do the dirty work they so enjoyed. “What is it?”

“I’ve just been alerted by our contact at the international bank. Some of your offshore accounts have been frozen.”

“What? By who?”

“The FBI. Just this morning.”

Fuck. “The FBI froze my accounts.”

“Yes.”

He sat up, dragged a hand over his face. They’d been so careful with his finances. Burying them so deep it should have taken years for anyone to trace them back to him. “Which accounts?”

When the man told him, Manny’s stomach dropped. The accounts he used for sending money to Anya and Oceane. All three were compromised. “They’ve been talking to the Americans,” he murmured, feeling ill.

“It would appear so. Or…someone’s forced the information out of them.”

God. “Of course.” He stood, paced aimlessly across the kitchen, not even noticing the beautiful mountain vista out the floor-to-ceiling windows of the house he’d paid a fortune for.

Of course someone must have forced Anya and their daughter to tell them about the money. They would never betray him willingly. They had fled to the States for safety, out of desperation, but instead of finding temporary refuge there, the Americans must have taken them. The thought of them imprisoned in some American prison while investigators interrogated them day and night about him and his activities was more than he could bear.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Create new accounts in Switzerland under a new company and sell whatever shares you need to make up the amount lost. When they return home, they’ll need the money.”

“All right.” The accountant paused. “Are you going to stay in Mexico?”

“For now.” Soon he would slip into Panama and wait there until the immediate threat against him was over. But not until Anya and Oceane were returned safely to Mexico. Until then, he had to pretend everything was as it should be. He had to fool everyone, not let anyone see him sweat.

“All right. You’ll keep me updated?”

“Yes. Call me when you’ve arranged everything.” He ended the call and immediately dialed his lawyer, a man he paid handsomely to be at his beck and call. “The Americans have Anya and Oceane,” he began abruptly.

They were deep into conversation about what needed to happen next, to protect him, the women and his assets, when the front door opened into the grand foyer off the kitchen. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched his wife sail through the door, her hands loaded with boutique shopping bags, a pair of designer sunglasses hiding her eyes.

“I have to go,” he said to the lawyer. “Call me later when you have more details.” He hung up without waiting for a response and put on a smile for Elena as she swept into the kitchen. “Have a nice day?” he asked, taking the bags for her and setting them on the counter.

She seemed happier now, more like her old self. Things had been strained between them recently. Maybe a couple of months. He wasn’t sure what he’d done, but she’d been distant and cool to him until maybe a week ago, around the time when this latest crisis had happened.

“I did. You?”

He shrugged, slipping into his acting role as comfortably as if it were a second skin. Over the years, he’d perfected it. “Just some business things I had to deal with.”

She stopped, sliding her sunglasses up onto her head to study him with those miss-nothing brown eyes. “Is there trouble?”

He smiled again. “Nothing I can’t handle.” Elena didn’t know about Oceane. She thought that his trips to Veracruz were business-related only, and out of respect for her as his wife, he’d been careful to keep both Oceane and Anya out of her life and never speak about them in her presence.

Elena had been just eighteen when they married, a naïve, uneducated peasant girl from a neighboring village, and he twenty-three. He’d been a nobody back then. A farmer’s son with work-roughened hands who did the occasional illegal deal to get ahead. She’d been loyal to him from day one, long before he had power and money. He owed her for that. Would give her anything.

But try as they might, they’d never been able to have a child. And after he’d fathered Oceane, the possibility of adopting a child with Elena hadn’t appealed to him in the least, so he’d quashed the idea and they’d made peace with the reality that they would never have children. Elena had let it go as well and now filled her time with travel, volunteer work, and her social circle.

“And that’s why I admire you so much,” she said, her hips swaying as she walked over and wound her slender arms around his neck with a sigh.

It gave him a measure of relief to know things were back to normal between them again.

Lifting one hand, she trailed the backs of her fingers down the side of his face, still as beautiful as the day he’d married her. “Such a handsome man you are, even with this new addition of silver,” she added, stroking the streak of gray at his temple.

He squeezed her waist, leaned in to kiss her gently. “You spoil me with your compliments.”

“I only say the truth,” she whispered, sliding her fingers into his hair as she deepened the kiss. His cock reacted instantly, his blood heating when she pressed that lush, female body to his. Almost thirty years together, and she could still make his body hum with a single touch.

She pulled away, a sultry smile on her lips. “I bought you something.”

“Did you? What?”

Dropping her hands to her sides, she turned away and went over to dig something out of one of the bags. A small black bag, just big enough to hold something the size of an apple. “It’s outside,” she said, a smug gleam in her dark eyes as she held the bag out to him.

He raised an eyebrow and took the offering from her. Opening it, he found a key. He grinned when he saw the logo on it. “A Jaguar?” He’d been eyeing a particular model over the last few months, to add to his collection of sports cars.

“Mmm, you’ll have to see.”

Hooking an arm around her waist, he walked to the front door with her. She paused there a moment, gave him a smile and threw the door wide open. A sleek, silver Jaguar sports car sat parked under the porte-cochere, a huge red bow on the hood.

He couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s not even close to my birthday.”

“I know.” She squeezed him once then gave him a push toward the car. “You’ve been working so hard recently, I thought you deserved a present.”

She thought it had to do with business deals or cartel business, not because his daughter and former mistress had been attacked and he’d been frantically trying to find them. Even with all his money and contacts, he hadn’t found them yet.

He gave a sideways nod at the Jag, watching Elena. “You wanna come for its inaugural spin?”

“Already did when I drove it here.” Tossing him a grin, she sauntered back toward the front door. “Have fun.”

Manny took the bow off and climbed into the driver’s seat, the heady scent of rich, new leather filling his nose. He pressed the start button, and the powerful V12 engine roared to life.

A sense of exhilaration pumped through him as he shot down the long, private driveway. The frustration and uncertainty gnawing at him eased somewhat beneath the flood of adrenaline. But even the thrill of racing down the road in his new Jag couldn’t take away the lingering weight of worry in his chest.

Oceane didn’t know much about his business, but Anya did. What had she told the Americans? He’d have to start emergency procedures immediately to limit the damage. Liquidate some of his larger holdings, create new shell companies just to be safe, change locations of his most important operations and switch up the people in his organization.

A call came in as he turned onto the main road a mile from his place. He set it on speaker, both hands busy, one on the wheel and the other on the stick shift. “Yes?”

“It’s Hector. I…I have bad news.”

One of his most trusted business advisers. Manny braced himself. “Tell me.”

“Our main lab outside Guadalajara was just destroyed.”

Manny gripped the wheel tighter. God dammit. The fourth one hit in the past week. “Federales?”

“No.”

He clenched his jaw. “Ruiz,” he growled, rage surging through him. First that bastard had dared to attack Anya and Oceane, force them into running. Manny would see he went to hell for that alone. But this guerilla turf battle Ruiz continued to wage would not go unanswered, either. Manny would hit back hard, obliterate all remaining traces of Ruiz’s organization.

“Si. We think so.”

“Can any of it be saved?”

“No. It’s a write-off.”

Hijo de puta. The Guadalajara operation was one of his biggest, taken from Ruiz after he’d been captured. Manny had modernized it, spent a few million giving it extra security and camouflage and hired the leading drug mixers to produce his trademark product—Asian heroin cut with just enough carfentanyl to ensure addiction, but not kill the majority of its users.

Dead users meant fewer customers and less demand for his product. Manny was okay with some risk in his business dealings and didn’t mind the body count his drugs racked up as long as he created more addicts than he lost.

Now it was gone, and he’d have to scramble to replace it somewhere new before supply was completely disrupted.

“Call Montoya.” His chief enforcer. “He’ll deal with it.” Ruiz wanted war? Manny would snuff out his pathetic resistance in the most brutal way possible. Brutality was the only language an animal like Ruiz understood. How the hell was that stupid fuck attacking him from the inside of a U.S. prison, anyway? Manny wanted every last one of the bastards still loyal to Ruiz dead. As for Ruiz, it would take time to get to him in a U.S. federal prison. But it could still be done.

“All right.”

Manny punched the end button and stomped on the brake and clutch, simultaneously cranking the wheel to the left, swinging the Jag around in a tight 180 that made the tires squeal. He gunned it, heading back to the house. There was a phone number hidden in his office safe there, one he’d never used before. The only contact number he’d been given for El Escorpion.

He’d held off on calling it after Oceane and Anya had fled because Manny’s position in the cartel was new and a little precarious as he was still proving himself. He’d gone to great lengths to downplay to cartel insiders the seriousness of what had happened, spreading a rumor that Oceane and Anya had merely gone on vacation after the attack.

El Escorpion had a ruthless reputation, though neither Manny nor anyone else in the cartel had actually met the organization’s leader. If you embarrassed the cartel in some way or did anything to make him question your loyalty, you and your family were wiped out on orders from El Escorpion.

The only exception was Ruiz, who’d been taken alive by the Americans, and now that bastard was a continual thorn in all their sides.

As soon as he got into his office Manny would call that number because things had gone too far. It was time to bring in whatever assets he could to get Oceane and Anya back, then destroy Ruiz’s lingering grip on this country.

Today was the beginning of the end of this turf war.

****

Fernando Diaz paused with the bite of huevos rancheros poised halfway to his mouth when the ring of a phone came from down the hallway. The only landline in the entire hacienda.

All conversation at the breakfast table ceased instantly, his mother, wife and two young children staring at him expectantly. They all knew what the phone signified, though not all of them knew what it was used for.

Wiping his mouth with a crisply pressed linen napkin, he pushed his chair back and stood. “Excuse me for a moment, darlings.”

As usual, his mother’s light footsteps sounded behind him on the tile floor as he headed out of the kitchen and down the hall to the locked office at the end. El Escorpion’s private domain.

The phone continued to ring as he looked into the retinal scanner installed beside the door and pressed his right hand to the keypad so it could read his palm and fingerprints. Seconds later the elaborate electronic locking mechanism flipped open. The door snicked open.

Pushing it aside, he strode for the desk, looked back at his mother as she shut the door and stood watching him. She raised a silvery eyebrow at him. “Are you going to answer that?”

A call at this hour meant bad news. He’d had his fill of that lately with Ruiz and was tired of dealing with infighting bullshit.

He picked up the receiver, hit a button to put the conversation on speaker so he wouldn’t have to relay everything to his mother afterward. She might be in her seventies, but she was still as sharp and nosy as ever. The line was heavily encrypted, the technology updated weekly to avoid hacking attempts by the Mexican and American authorities.

“Yes?” A state of the art program would synthesize his voice so it couldn’t be identified by any computer systems. Or so he was assured.

“It’s Nieto.”

“Manuel. What can I do for you?”

Fernando listened as Nieto described what had happened with his daughter and former mistress. Or current mistress, Fernando never had understood the nuances of their complex relationship.

“It’s Ruiz,” Nieto said flatly. “Has to be. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but his network is still active.”

Fernando met his mother’s stony gaze, noted the telltale set to her jaw that he knew so well. Carlos Ruiz had been a pain in the ass and a proverbial thorn in the cartel’s side for too long. Fernando had mistakenly thought that being locked up in an American prison would end the problem. “You have permission to go after what’s left of his organization, and the cartel will back you up if necessary.”

“Thank you. I truly appreciate your support in this.”

Fernando liked Manny. Far preferred him to the likes of Ruiz, and yet El Escorpion was far too wise and experienced to fully trust any of the cartel’s lieutenants. “You’re welcome. But make no mistake, Manuel, the organization will not tolerate any further risks to its operations. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now I’ve got to get back to my family.” He ended the call, set the receiver back into place and looked at his mother again.

Because of Ruiz, the cartel was in far too precarious a position at the moment. Anyone causing more trouble would learn firsthand how El Escorpion ruled this empire like an iron fist.